You can't kid a kidder.
Five lessons for the liberal press to help them get through the coming four years.
Five Truths for the Liberal Press
I have five simple truths to share with the liberal press that may help them survive for at least the next four years. After that, it’s up to them.
If there is one thing the liberal press should have figured out by now, it’s that you can’t kid a kidder, or you can’t con a con man. Ridicule, mocking, skewing information, lying, or even piling up the irrefutable facts are meaningless to the experienced kidder/con artist.
Nobody understands this because nobody in the liberal press has changed how they do things one little bit since 2016. Maybe the problem is that this can’t be understood rationally, in the same way that nobody (the vast majority of us) can understand card tricks and magicians. If we did, they wouldn’t work.
I came across this fascinating study that shows, for the first time apparently, that people who are good at lying are also very good at detecting lies. The study concludes that there may be some underlying “deception-general ability” at work in both lying and detecting lies. The study further notes that deception is a difficult task to undertake successfully and that it may therefore have a potential evolutionary advantage.
The message to the press here, if they’re listening, is that you are out of your league and if you keep doing things the way you always have, you are doomed to fail.
But I digress. Let’s cut right to the chase. (apologies to the Bible, religions that consider it their Holy Book, and to God if they’re listening)
Five Truths (to begin with)
Thou shalt not give false testimony.
Nobody is more expert at putting off reporters by insult, misdirection or sheer buffoonery than Donald Trump. If you counter with facts, the facts appear to be “weaponized,” that is, they look like a form of attack. That’s what the public sees: the press attacking Donald Trump YET AGAIN. What the facts are doesn’t matter. They are cast in doubt, and the overall effect is not to discredit Mr. Trump, but to discredit the press. The question is, what do you think you are doing by countering?
Thou shalt not take the name of the _____ in vain.
Satire is the stock and trade of the liberal press, editorial cartoonists in particular, but satire rolls off this duck’s back like water. The recent resignation of cartoonist Ann Telnaes from the Washington Post is a case in point. (I wrote about it here.) Telnaes resigned because a particularly biting cartoon of hers was rejected by her editors, which she felt to be censorship. Because of her resignation, millions more people saw her cartoon than would have otherwise. But all the kerfuffle made absolutely no difference, to Donald Trump, to his supporters, or the critical discourse around him. None. She just ended up without a good job. (Telnaes moved to Substack where she instantly had thousands of subscribers (65k when I checked just now). You should support her, if only to see whether she heeds any of my advice:)
What cartoonists and editorial satirists are to do instead is the question they should be asking themselves. I have some ideas. (See more below.)
#6 of 9 dreadful caricatures, 2020 © RL Thou shalt not create false idols.
You cannot approach the news from a predisposition based on identity politics. Woke-ism is a minefield planted with ideals that have been perverted and distorted. Exactly how this has happened is a great mystery1, but there is no question about it: pronouns, gender fluidity, sexual dysmorphia, DEI, playing the victim, and destroying reputations and careers through cancellation are on a spectrum of bullying and elite virtue signally, to wit, ideological authoritarianism. The goal appears to be to get “normal” people to behave the way others have determined to be theoretically correct, leading to, one imagines, a state of heaven on earth. Well, nobody is going to heaven at gunpoint. Duh.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s misfortune.
Victims are everywhere, in every nation, race, class or status, and always have been. This is not news. It is, of course, sad. But parading victims in the news like hostages or waving them around like banners to your ethical superiority convinces no one of the legitimacy of their cause or the desperation of their need. We just get numb. More importantly, it does not help. There is a whole industry legion of (Western, white, Christian) do-gooders out there. Let them do their job.
Honour thy father and thy mother.
Journalists have lost their principles and their traditions, and with that, whatever virtue (objectivity) they once laid claim to. Journalism is now predicated on judgment, right or wrong, black or white. Many, many people (like
or or Compact Magazine have been pointing out for years now that the role of the journalist is not to advocate. Nobody expects journalists to be brainiacs or pundits. Nobody cares what they think personally. But if you cannot look at both sides of an issue and just give a basic, balanced report, then you are failing, and nobody believes you.
More below.
I have said here many times that the best way to deal with disruptive information is to erase it, the same way that shopkeepers erase or paint over graffiti with grey. Eventually, the culprits stop because they are getting no traction at that location.
You can’t exactly erase a president of the United States from the news but isn’t this worth thinking about instead of knee-jerk reporting on every sigh and stutter that comes out of the Oval Office? Mr. Trump feeds on attention. Would it be so hard to just not use his name and take no pictures?
The use of parody and satire is very complicated because they are the mainstays of a “critical” press. They are part of why we have this idea of constitutionally protected freedom of the press. A good gag or satirical editorial cartoon that tells us the truth about what’s going on is a joy and a moment of social bonding, but in today’s climate, with these actors, it is not enough. You cannot, like the jester, speak truth to power when the person on the throne is a jester himself. He will mockingly throw his truth back at you every time. (As suggested in this cartoon first posted as a Note in August last year.)
I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe experts like
or do.I dunno, maybe the Washington Post should replace Ms. Telnaes with a hack like me, who could not possibly do a worse job of it. All I know is that dressing up a moribund, clichéed message in a fine drawing is ineffective and probably counterproductive at this point.
I wrote a little while ago about caricature. I’m not very good at it, but then, I don’t practice very much, at all actually. Would it be going too far to say that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times should be regularly publishing my simply dreadful caricatures of the Commander in Chief? I am open to offers :)
Final thought: you know what they say about doing the same thing over again the same way and expecting a different result. Ya, that.
My first encounter with Woke was in 1980. 1980! at graduate school, when I was formally, for the first time, introducing myself to my fellow graduate students and was met with sneers and whispers. Should I name names? Is that the game we’re playing now. #No #NotMe
There is a lot more to be said here about why I did not protest at the time, and how, even worse, I became complicit in the game of posturing and bullying in the name of political correctness. For another time.